Syncing Ipad, iphone and Google Drive

Yes, this ring fencing of files to exist only within their associated apps is really annoying

I fell for the Apple promo video showing USA firm of solicitors only using iPads and decided to switch from Win7 laptops to an iPad. I cannot migrate my 50GB of business data over to the 256GB iPad ! For one thing Apple's own iWorks refuses to produce internal folder structures that are nested more than 1 level deep, and secondly there's no migration tool provided.

But there are exceptions, many apps can "reach across fences" to pickup images for example from the "Photos" app. Or many will reach into the PhoneBook for data. Various iPad office suites reach into one another data spaces. But the transition from hundreds of Win7 nested folders to iPad is terribly difficult to achieve.

The closest I've found so far is to use the mirror-sync facility of Google Drive on Win7 to automatically create the Google Cloud structure that matches my data structure on the laptop, then use Google Drive on iPad to browse exactly the same structure via the WiFi connection to the Cloud.

Then, painfully on a file by file basis, you can select "make available offline" to replicate your laptop file structure on the iPad. Yippee !!

Please.... will someone write an app that automatically scans the whole of a selected Google Drive folder and makes the whole **** thing available offline? Please?

advanceheating wrote:

Yes, this ring fencing of files to exist only within their associated apps is really annoying

This is also ("sandboxing" of the operating system) a central core feature of iOS since it's inception. The sandbox operating system model is a core component of the whole iOS security model. Since an app cannot access another's file space, malicious software cannot propagate nor gain control of a device or its software.

iOS itself, and its own core apps (photos, calendar, contacts, etc) can pass data to other apps that request it. For example, only iOS itself has access to the aGPS system. Other location based apps only get location information by requesting it from iOS's location services component.

The sandboxed nature of iOS is never going to change as it is a deliberate design choice by Apple. To date, there is no known malware or other malicious exploits in the wild for iOS 9.3.5 or newer. There are many known malicious exploits in circulation for Android.

All that said, yes, for a great many tasks or work flows, an iOS device is no replacement for a laptop or desktop computer and their software. I know I could not do my work exclusively on an iPad. Although it is very useful for many things, it cannot replace my computers.

This is how I'm using iOS as a full blown business machine. It gets a bit of help from a lively app called Office 700.

My small company used MS Office for years and then converted to OpenOffice & LibreOffice in order to get away from the poor quality of software Microsoft were putting out. All my Windows PC files were slowly getting converted from .doc to .odt etc.

Then the rental OS model of Windows meant changing to Linux or iOS and the sheer quality of Apple hardware in ALL categories of computing and phones (see UK Which Magazine) meant that iOS won. Next step: moving from PC laptops to iPad....

What a pain to try to move your company's working directory of files and folders over to an iPad ! What a pain to find a way to edit all those Open Office documents and spreadsheets ! Here's a link to the hard work I've put into making this work:

www.icloud.com/pages/0SSu5EqdEU_eS1G-gsFrZBryQ#IPad_Tricks

The upshot is that the iPad application of choice is "Office 700", and the file management app to move all those files locally onto the iPad is Google Drive. The unique thing is that GDrive is quite good at syncing copies of the exact directories and files onto the iPad, and Office 700 can just about bat the files back and forth across the wretched sandboxes.

From what you've written, I would say that it seems an Office 365 subscription, and the free iOS versions of MS Office Apps, including MS OneDrive, would do much of the same thing for you. For those who work for places with Office 365 enterprise accounts, that's one option for work files.

However, my own experience is that an iPad simply cannot substitute for my work (Lenovo t460p) or home computers (2015 MacBook Pro 15"). Many of my excel files are far too massive to open and use on any tablet (and no, they cannot be split or reduced - they are single very large data tables). Many of my Word documents have far too complex figures and formatting to be editable on a tablet, and there is no integrated literature solution like endnote that can work on an iPad. Etc, etc, etc.

Bottom line to my mind is expecting an iPad, or any tablet for that matter to be a fully 100% replacement for a Windows or an OS X computer is not logical for (at least many) work situations. If your work involves many files that need to be organized in a file structure, if you work with large data sets, if you routinely need multiple programs open simultaneously as you work on projects/reports/manuscripts, if you need integrated shared data (e.g. endnote and word, graphics and word processing files, data files and report files), if you routinely need to access other resources on servers or shared machines - then an iPad is simply not going to do all that for you.

Go to Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendars->Accounts, and add your Google account there.

You can then add items to the Google specific account for calendars and contacts etc.. and have them sync.

Hi! I am using Google Drive on my iPad, but google drive doesn't sync my files. I can only see my files, but if i try to highlight, I have to open in other program (ie. adobe reader), in this case the file is opened with another name and all changes are not synced to Google Drive. Can you help me please?

The Google Drive App will let you view many formats but is limited in what it can edit.

Once you open the file in another App, it is physically Copied there, so if you edit it say in Adobe reader, you are editing the copy.

You need to send it back to Google Drive, so its available to every other device accessing Google Drive. Use the Twisted Action Arrow at the top left corner of Adobe when viewing the document and look for Google Drive there so you can copy it back to it. It will ask you if you want to upload it, just say yes.

File Management on an iPad is not quite as straight forward as on a computer because it does not have a normal file system like you are used to in a computer. All files must be associated with an App, and reside in the Apps file space area for them to access it. There is no shared file space between Apps, so every time you open in another App you create a copy.

Thank you Phil to help me.

God bless you.